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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25266826">Angst</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diana_Raven/pseuds/Diana_Raven'>Diana_Raven</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>YJ Week 2020 [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Young Justice (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood, Body Horror, Dark fic, Gen, Ghosts, Horror, Vomiting, talking about death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 07:29:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,296</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25266826</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diana_Raven/pseuds/Diana_Raven</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Greta thought it was over, but as she was to learn, you take the good with the bad.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Greta Hayes &amp; Slobo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>YJ Week 2020 [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1827547</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Angst</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>k so personally i have two hcs for what happens to greta after yj and neither of them are nice :) the first is a variation of this: greta keeps her warden powers and joins anita on a yj: dark team, or she gets childhood cancer.... yeah so. <br/>Also this was fun to write</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="western">First there’s nothingness. Then, there’s sound, and sensation. When Greta slowly blinks open her eyes, she can hear a song on the radio. It sounds familiar, but she can’t remember from where. She mouths the words, more because she can’t help herself than any other reason.</p><p class="western">She’s in a tub, stretching her long, (finally) human legs out. Enjoying a bubble bath. Something she hasn’t enjoyed in… she frowns, in a while. But she can’t remember why. <em>Treat yourself</em>, Cassie’s been saying that a lot lately, something from one of the shows that Cissie’s been staring in. Greta relaxes into the warm water. She breathes in the vanilla scented bubbles.</p><p class="western">Treat yourself. Yeah, that’s what she’s doing, treating herself.</p><p class="western">So she’s surprised when there’s a knock on the door.</p><p class="western">“Come in!” she calls. The door opens before she finishes getting the words out.</p><p class="western">The radio on the windowsill beside the tub, drums out the song: ‘<em>better watch out~ better watch out~ better watch out~’</em> Greta knows those words are wrong somehow, but she can’t remember what they should be. She’s reasonably sure they aren’t the words she was singing a minute ago.</p><p class="western">Billy stands in the doorway.</p><p class="western">“EW!” She cries, splashing as he comes closer, “Billy! Get out!”</p><p class="western">“See you in the abyss, sis,” he rasps.</p><p class="western">Greta knows what he’s going to do too late, as if she’s lived this moment before hundreds of times.</p><p class="western">Maybe, she thinks as he swipes the radio off of the sill, song sputtering into nothingness, she has. She’s half out of the tub when it hits the water.</p><p class="western">It feels like a tickle, and she knows acutely, that she’s going to die.</p><p class="western">Then it feels like a lightning strike, and Greta doesn’t even get out a scream.</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">Greta gasps, heaving herself up and over onto the grass. Bile and metal sting her mouth and she blinks away the tears. Here, she’s safe. Billy’s gone, she knows. He’s dead, and she’s not anymore, and everything is going to be okay.</p><p class="western">Everything is going to be okay.</p><p class="western">She coughs out some spittle as the nausea settles in her belly. The world stops spinning—the light blue sky stays above, and the soft green grass below her. She catches her breath, swallowing sobs, and he lets her. She can feel his eyes watching her.</p><p class="western">“Alright?” Slobo asks.</p><p class="western">Greta closes her eyes, curls her hands into fists and nods.</p><p class="western">“Yeah, yeah… I’m fine.” Slowly she turns back over, onto her back. She settles back next to him, and glances over.</p><p class="western">Here Slobo looks calm like he almost never did in life. He closes his eyes. His thin arms support his head. His legs cross over one another. A warm breeze blows by, and his long black bangs flutter. They’ve grown longer since he died, which Greta wouldn’t think possible but-</p><p class="western">“But,” Slobo finishes for her, “this <em>is</em> your world, after all.”</p><p class="western">My world. Greta glances back up at the perfect blue sky. At the perfect paper-white clouds that float lazily by. The grass soft but just prickly enough.</p><p class="western">Her world. The one born of her mind after she was sick of freezing herself to death in the place between life and death. She made this place. If she tries hard enough, she can see the real world around them—the desolate meteor that they sit on, the black and cold sky around them. If she listens hard enough she could hear screams.</p><p class="western">Greta doesn’t try too hard, not when she’s here.</p><p class="western">“Bad dream?” Slobo asks.</p><p class="western">Greta shrugs. “The usual.”</p><p class="western">Slobo’s quiet for a minute, and Greta knows he wants to speak but doesn’t want to offend her. It’s weird, before he died, he didn’t care about what anyone thought, but here… here…</p><p class="western">“Do you ever wish you brought him back?” Slobo asks slowly.</p><p class="western">Greta blinks at him. She can tell there’s more to the more that he doesn’t say. Can’t say. Won’t say.</p><p class="western">She knows who the ‘him’ is too.</p><p class="western">“No,” Greta says. “Not… not Billy, at least.”</p><p class="western">Slobo looks over at her. “Then who?”</p><p class="western">“I tried, you know,” Greta almost whispers. She’s always been able to tell Slobo about her sins. He never judged. “To bring back my father and mother, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t-wasn’t quick enough. Angry enough.”</p><p class="western">“But with me…?”</p><p class="western">Greta closes her eyes, sucking in a breath. She doesn’t technically breathe here, neither of them do but Slobo also doesn’t breathe because he’s dead.</p><p class="western">“Greta?” he says pointedly when she doesn’t answer. When she refuses to answer.</p><p class="western">She doesn’t want to remember. She comes here to <em>be</em>, not so she has to remember.</p><p class="western">“Can you <em>stop</em>,” the words come out as a hissing order. Were they blades they’d have cut Slobo clean through. But Slobo’s brow has solidified, and he isn’t backing down. Not today. Not tonight. Not this time.</p><p class="western">“<em>No</em>.”</p><p class="western">“<em>Why</em>?” Greta hisses at him. Her illusion of a perfect world shivers around them, more empathic then she’d thought.</p><p class="western">Slobo doesn’t back down. He’s not afraid. There’s very little she can do to him, or at least nothing really that he doesn’t want.</p><p class="western">Greta swallows and tries not to think about where Slobo would rather-where he’d been. What she’d done to get him back.</p><p class="western">“Misty…” he says in a soft voice so unlike his own. The nickname makes her flinch, and she knows that he used it on purpose. Maybe to anger her, to make her <em>want </em>to let him go. But she-she can’t. She can’t let go. Not of him too. The only person who helped her, who understood who she was at the end. Tim would never understand, no matter how he talked her down, he’d never really <em>understand</em>. He could play with the idea, he could sympathize, but he’d never <em>know</em>. Slobo <em>did</em>. “Let me go.”</p><p class="western">“No.” The word is cracked. Greta clears her throat and the perfect world shudders around her once more before she summons her will. Before she puts her foot down and it glitches back into permanence. “<em>No!</em> You’re staying with me! Don’t you <em>want</em> to be with me?”</p><p class="western">“I’m not supposed to be here, Kiddo.”</p><p class="western">Greta shakes her head. She’s the Warden, she can decide where people go. And she <em>needs</em> him. She <em>needs</em> Slobo.</p><p class="western">The Warden power, this ability to let the dead pass through her, it’s all she’s kept from her alive-again-ness. The mist state, the shape-shifting is all gone. But this, seeing the bed, letting them pass through—that’s all she has left.</p><p class="western">And she can’t let him go.</p><p class="western">“No.”</p><p class="western">Slobo grimaces. He’s losing his patience, like he does every time they do this. Greta digs her feet into the grass beneath her.</p><p class="western">“Let me fragging go, Greta!”</p><p class="western">“No!”</p><p class="western">“<em>Greta</em>-!”</p><p class="western">“<em>No!</em>” She shouts, and covers her ears. Her world shakes. Falling apart around her, literally. The ground shivers and the sky blinks in and out and she feels something tear at her chest. Like her heart’s been ripped out. “NO! NO! NO! <em>NO!</em>”</p><p class="western">Her heart is shoved back into her chest, and with a breath like ice her eyes fly open, and Greta finally, truly wakes.</p><p class="western"> </p><p class="western">The room at Elias’ is quiet. She can hear Cassie snore on the other side of the room. It must be really late (or early) if Cassie’s asleep—she went on night patrol. Greta sucks in heavy breaths. Her heart pounds in her ears, almost blocking out Cassie’s snore with their rush. She blinks water from her eyes and places her index and middle finger on her left wrist, trying to count her speeding pulse.</p><p class="western">
  <em>I’m okay. I’m alive. I’m okay. I’m alive. </em>
</p><p class="western">
  <em>Slobo’s alive. He’s safe. </em>
</p><p class="western">
  <em>In me. </em>
</p><p class="western">A sharp buzz fills her ears in the silence of the night and Greta ignores it, focusing of the soft skin beneath her fingers. She counts the passing beats for every minute, watching the clock. Cassie has this horrible digital clock with blazing red numbers. It has one alarm which is the world’s most annoying <em>EHNH EHNH EHNH EHNH </em>in the world. It looks down on Greta maliciously from the shelf above her bed.</p><p class="western">Four fourty-six AM.</p><p class="western">It’ll be going off in two hours and fourteen minutes.</p><p class="western">Then Greta will have a day of classes. A day of pretended to be normal. Pretending that nothing weird has ever happened to her. Another day of lying to her friends by omission. Another day of not telling them that she held Slobo under her heart.</p><p class="western">Greta stands when her pulse slows to normal and walks to the shared bathroom.</p><p class="western">At night the dorms in Elias’ School for Girls are silent. The school itself seems like the type of place where ghosts would roam for fun.</p><p class="western">Tonight a ghost does roam. At least, someone who isn’t supposed to be alive, or maybe was supposed to live and didn’t.</p><p class="western">Greta doesn’t bother putting on slippers. The floor of the hallway is a horribly ugly grey (or perhaps, purple at one time in the seventies) carpet, but the scratchy material grounds her as she walks to the bathroom. She can’t turn on any lights, so she uses her hands to guide her there, even though there isn’t anything in the hallway. The walls are a textured cream color she knows, but each door is wood. Her nails drag across the pine as she passes them.</p><p class="western">Greta makes it to the communal bathroom and flicks on the light.</p><p class="western">It turns on with the buzz of old florescents. Greta blinks against the painful brightness. She lets herself adjust.</p><p class="western">She heads towards the sinks. Greta studies herself in the mirror. Her thin cheeks—she’s lost a lot of baby fat since coming back—look sunken in the horrible light. She’s grown taller, but only a little bit. Her blonde hair is held up in two small buns on the top of her head.</p><p class="western">She squints at herself, at her chest more importantly. She can feel him in there. Pounding against her rib-cage. Begging her to let him go.</p><p class="western">Greta presses her hand there, but it never connects.</p><p class="western">Greta blinks and looks down. It’s like she’s seeing herself from outside herself for a moment. Like she’s touching someone else, or this is a movie. Because when she looks down, she doesn’t feel anything, even though her hands rests just on her chest.</p><p class="western">Greta takes a deep breath to stop herself from panicking, but when she does, her hand goes right through her breasts, all the way up to the wrist.</p><p class="western">Then, Greta begins to hyperventilate.</p><p class="western">She turns away from the mirror and tries to run back to her own room, but with her first step her right foot sinks through the floor all the way up to her knee. There’s <em>thump! </em>and pain shoots up her leg, as if she’d just jumped off of a swing and landed wrong on her foot. Or knee.</p><p class="western">Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod.</p><p class="western">Greta screams. “<em>CASSIE!”</em></p><p class="western">Greta tries to take another step—to crawl—against the cold, disgusting bathroom floor. White tiles with black grout growing between them, but her other leg loses substance too and she sinks down to her hips.</p><p class="western">“<em>CASSIE! CASSIE!</em>” she shrieks.</p><p class="western">But Cassie is so far away. She’s not going to wake up.</p><p class="western">She’s not going to wake up.</p><p class="western">Greta feels Slobo beneath her chest, laughing as she sinks down to her waist. Her legs kick and dangle. She’s not sure if they’re through the floor, or not because she can’t <em>feel </em>anything.</p><p class="western">Greta just screams now. For anyone. For Superman. For Robin. For Cissie or Traya. <em>Anyone</em>. She needs help!</p><p class="western">“<em>HELP! HELP! PLEASE! PLEASE! I’M SINKING! I NEED HELP!</em>” she screams. She shouts for Boston Brand or the Spectre but no one comes.</p><p class="western">She sinks another inch. Her hand is starting to become transparent, Greta can see her bones through it.</p><p class="western">Tears spring to her eyes. She tries to use her other hand to drag herself forward, nails digging into the black mold between the tiles of the bathroom floor. She continues screaming.</p><p class="western">Greta sinks another inch.</p><p class="western"><em>You deserve this,</em> she thinks. She died alone the first time, why shouldn’t she now? Beneath her ribs, Slobo pounds in his cage.</p><p class="western">“<em><b>HELP!</b></em>”</p><p class="western">She tries to drag herself onto her side. She flounders back and forth. She’s so scared that she doesn’t even notice until Ellen shouts: “Oh god! Greta! Are you okay?”</p><p class="western">Greta looks up at Ellen. Ellen, nice Ellen. The girl who gave Traya her Liberty Bell hat.</p><p class="western">“Help! <em>Please</em>!” Greta begs through hiccuping sob.</p><p class="western">“Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod, okay. I’m gonna-I’m gonna pull you out. Everything’s gonna be okay,” Ellen says, more for herself than Greta. She reaches out and grabs Greta’s hand.</p><p class="western">Greta almost cries from the contact. The feel of Ellen’s soft hands against her. On her palm is a small, smudged, ink heart. She still smells like her Dior perfume. “Thank you! Thank you!”</p><p class="western">Ellen tries to pull, bracing her feet against the floor. She heaves, grunting loudly, then she flies backward.</p><p class="western">Greta’s other hand has become incorporeal.</p><p class="western">Greta screams.</p><p class="western">Ellen throws herself on the floor, trying to grasp but every time her hands touch some part of Greta they go right through.</p><p class="western">Greta sinks another inch.</p><p class="western">“Stop! STOP!” she shouts because Ellen’s only making it <em>worse</em>. “Get Cassie!”</p><p class="western">“Cassie. Right. Okay. Cassie.” Ellen books it out of the bathroom. By now other girls have started to wake up. They moan and grumble, trying to figure out what the commotion is all about, and Ellen almost runs over two or three on her way out.</p><p class="western">“Greta?” One girl she has math with asks.</p><p class="western">“What’s going on?”</p><p class="western">“Who’s screaming?”</p><p class="western">“<em>CASSIE!</em>” Greta shouts. “GET <em>CASSIE</em>!<em>” </em>Because how can she explain to them what’s going on, how can she explain-she feels herself drop, and she throws out her elbows and catches herself on them. Pain shatters up her arms and she cries out, not from fear this time.</p><p class="western">“Help her!” Someone shouts, and someone dives for her, trying to pull her out like Ellen had and Greta reaches up for them, with just enough time to watch the girl’s hand slide right through hers, and then Greta falls and screams.</p><p class="western"><em>Solidify. </em>She begs herself as she sees the girls in the floor above fall away. The floor which isn’t more than six inches thick flies by. It’s full of cobwebs and a bug climbs into Greta’s mouth while she screams. She chokes and spits it out.</p><p class="western"><em>Solidify, solidify, solidify! </em>She begs herself, trying to clench her body like she did when she was mist. When she was not-dead. Before all of this.</p><p class="western">She falls to the ground with a <em>thump!</em> The crash sends pain up her left leg (which she lands on). Greta screams. She can hear the heavy thudding of tens of feet above her as they run down to the floor she’s on now.</p><p class="western">But she’s solid.</p><p class="western">She’s solid.</p><p class="western">Her chest feels like it’s going to be torn open, ribs bent out and backwards.</p><p class="western">Greta vomits onto the floor. She coughs, trying to bring something in. Trying to get in <em>some</em> air. Something to prove that she’s alive. That she’s human.</p><p class="western">But she feels herself fluctuate. Glitch. Like a light that has trouble turning on.</p><p class="western">
  <em>Solidify! Solidify! </em>
</p><p class="western">“<em>Greta?!” </em>The voice is familiar. Cassie. Someone woke up Cassie. “<em>Greta?! What’s going on? Are you okay?! GRETA!</em>”</p><p class="western">Greta had thought that this was over. She’d <em>thought-</em></p><p class="western"><em>Come on, Kid, you aren’t that stupid, are you</em>? A voice so close to Slobo’s whispers in her ears as Cassie brings her into her arms. Cassie’s warm hands touch and touch and <em>touch</em>. Greta sinks into the sensation. She never wants Cassie to let go. Not as Cassie’s callused fingers rub roughly over her cheeks, and lips, and forehead.</p><p class="western">
  <em>Who ever heard of getting just the good part of their powers back?</em>
</p><p class="western">But I’m alive. Mr. Side made me <em>alive</em>.</p><p class="western">
  <em>Did he?</em>
</p><p class="western">Greta’s heart thuds in her chest.</p><p class="western">“Greta? Can you hear me?” Cassie’s voice breaks through her fog. Greta blinks at her.</p><p class="western">“What?”</p><p class="western">“Greta? Are you okay?”</p><p class="western">Greta stares at her hands. At her legs. It’s all solid now. If she hadn’t just fallen through a floor she’d think that she had imagined it all.</p><p class="western">“I’m-I’m fine now. I-I think.”</p><p class="western">Cassie lowers her voice so that only Greta can hear. “We should tell the League. That <em>can’t</em> be a normal side effect. Maybe he did something to you. No one really understands Omega Beams as it is, maybe he…” but Greta isn’t listening anymore.</p><p class="western">
  <em>Did he?</em>
</p><p class="western">“Greta?” she’s brought back to now when Cassie snaps her fingers rudely in front of Greta’s face. Greta blinks at her. Something wet is on her face, something warm. Greta can’t breathe through her nose.</p><p class="western">Greta gasps and grabs at her nose, trying to stifle the bleeding. She didn’t used to get spontaneous nose bleeds either. Was this a byproduct of turning incorporeal? Or was it something else?</p><p class="western">Cassie rips off some of her shirt and hands it to Greta to staunch the bleeding.</p><p class="western">“Greta?” Cassie asks, worriedly.</p><p class="western">“I… I think I’m fine now,” Greta mumbles through the rag. Her throat feels burnt on the inside from screaming. Scratched and raw.</p><p class="western">“Are-are you sure?”</p><p class="western">“Y-yeah.”</p><p class="western">But Cassie doesn’t seem to believe her. Greta doesn’t blame her, if she were Cassie she wouldn’t believe herself either.</p><p class="western">“You think you can come back to bed? Or should I call an emergency meeting now?”</p><p class="western">“I think… I think I can go back to bed,” Greta says.</p><p class="western"><em>Not like you knew when the first attack of phantom-ness came,</em> Slobo’s voice whispers in her ear. She swats at it absently. Cassie watches her warily.</p><p class="western">Greta flushes. “Fly,” she murmurs.</p><p class="western">Cassie must buy it because she puts on arm securely on Greta’s shoulder and leads her back upstairs to the dorms.</p><p class="western"><em>No one really understands Omega Beams,</em> Cassie had said.</p><p class="western"><em>Did he? </em>Slobo had asked.</p><p class="western">Maybe Greta is getting what was coming to her, for hurting so many people when she went evil.</p><p class="western">Cassie ushers Greta back upstairs, where on order of the staff, most of the girls have gone back to bed for the next hour or so that they’ll be able to.</p><p class="western">Greta is in bed, staring at Cassie’s insidious clock. Cassie’s back asleep, snoring already—patrol must have wiped her out. Now that the nosebleed is gone, it’s as if nothing ever happened. As if she never sunk through the floor. As if she didn’t lose control of her body.</p><p class="western">Greta closes her eyes, and tries to sleep.</p><p class="western"><em>Let me go, Greta</em>, Slobo says, but without any of his usual fire.</p><p class="western"><em>I can’t. </em>She can’t lose anyone else.</p><p class="western">She can’t.</p><p class="western">Greta tries to pull herself back to her perfect world. When she closes her eyes and lets herself sink into herself, into her body, into her mind, into the world between, she sees the cold and the nothing, and nothing else.</p><p class="western">Except Slobo, who floats in front of her.</p><p class="western">“Please don’t go,” she asks him. After what just happened, she can’t lose him. She can’t let go. She just can’t.</p><p class="western">Slobo stares at her for a moment. He doesn’t say what they’re both thinking. <em>Maybe your powers are coming back because you’re keeping me anchored here. Because you can’t give me up. </em></p><p class="western">Instead, he just says, “behind you.”</p><p class="western">Greta frowns, and turns.</p><p class="western">Billy.</p><p class="western">He looks exactly like he did in Bedlam’s world. Teenaged, long hair, square jaw.</p><p class="western"><em>It’s just a dream, </em>she tells herself, <em>you can wake up. It’s just a dream. </em></p><p class="western">Billy smiles at her, something so unlike him it throws her for a loop. “Hey there, little sis,” he says. He grins, and something colder than the frost of the nothing runs through her, “want to see a magic trick?”</p><p class="western">He raises his hands and-</p><p class="western">
  <em>poof!</em>
</p><p class="western">Greta’s gone.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>you can find me on tumblr @traya-sutton/@youngjustusorbust</p></blockquote></div></div>
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